Sunday reading

Here's some things I've been reading that I'd recommend:

• I struggle to choose what passage to quote in this interview with Paul Gorski, which I really just want you all to read all of:
  

  All these practices are alluring because they avoid the harder work of equity—because they don’t require that we identify inequities, how they are operating in schools, and how we’re complicit in them. I want to clarify: I do think that—in the context of a robust systemic approach to equity—some of these practices can play an important role. I wish my own teachers had access to trauma-informed classroom practices, for example, because I grew up with a lot of trauma and generally felt like I was repeatedly punished for the impact of that trauma. But what none of these approaches help us do is identify and eliminate inequities that are deeply embedded in our educational systems. When we’re not eliminating inequities, we’re instead trying to help students adjust to inequity-laden institutions—we’re feeding that classic deficit ideology.
  We challenge deficit ideologies by learning how to spot them in all their forms. Educational leaders have a big role to play here: they simply cannot allow deficit narratives and assumptions to live in their school or district cultures. On a more interpersonal level, when I hear somebody make a deficit-oriented statement, I like to ask a question that invites that person to look through a more structural lens. Somebody might say, “These low-income families just don’t value education. They never show up for anything.” In this case, I might ask, “I wonder if there are any other possible explanations for why those families are less likely than wealthier families to attend family-engagement events? Could there be an explanation other than they don’t care or they’re irresponsible?” In this way, I’m inviting somebody to try on a different lens.
  Ultimately, we challenge deficit narratives by making an intentional choice: equity efforts should never be about fixing anything about students who are marginalized in schools. They should always—always—be about fixing whatever is marginalizing students in schools. 

• Similarly, this piece on the trap of hiring a woman of color as a diversity officer without ensuring she has full leadership support to change the culture of the organization is a challenging but necessary read:

I asked how that was going.
“Not great,” she said. “The trouble is that they don’t actually want me to do my job.”
This is a complaint I heard time and again from the six women of color CDOs I spoke to for this essay, and it is a complaint I have made myself.



• If you have some time, try out this tool that tracks school by school demographics back over the past several decades. Worcester, try out the high schools!
  
• I learned a lot from this New Yorker piece on historic preservation and Black history, including of the existence of the Rosenwald schools, which says a lot, really, that someone who reads about education history as much as I have still hadn't come across them.